re/read - free browser extension: an offline library of web articles and EPUBs

[reapps_eu]

re/read is a free, open-source (AGPL) extension for Firefox (desktop and Android) and Chrome/Chromium. Disclosure up front: it is our project - built by a small Polish non-profit foundation, nothing to sell, no ads, no tracking. Posting here because MobileRead is exactly the crowd it was made for.

At its core it is an offline reading room living in your browser:

- Save any web page as a clean, readable article - stored in full on your device, so it opens with no network and keeps working when the original page moves or disappears.

- Import EPUB books into the same reading list (text-focused: long books are split into parts, the table of contents is built from chapter headings; DRM-free only).

- Highlighter with notes: word-snapped marks in a choice of inks, a note on any mark, a Highlights page listing every quote, and one-click export of all quotes and notes to a Markdown file.

- Search inside the open document and across the whole library - in titles and, on request, in the stored full texts, with snippets that jump straight to the hit.

- Reading position remembered per document; light, sepia and dark themes, serif or sans, adjustable column width; read-aloud with live word highlighting (the browser's own voices).

- Backup: the whole reading list exports to a single JSON file, highlights included.

The other half is for reading in a language you are learning - built around comprehensible input (Krashen): read what actually interests you, look up only what you need, and meet words again until they stick.

- Select a word or phrase to get a translation bubble (works offline). The engine (Bergamot - the technology behind Firefox's built-in page translation) ships inside the package and runs entirely on your device, so it works in airplane mode. About a hundred language pairs.

- StarDict dictionaries beside the engine: a catalogue of 400+ WikDict dictionaries installable in one click, or your own files. A translation model has to pick one meaning; a dictionary lists them all.

- Save a phrase and it gets a quiet dotted underline on every page and in every book where it reappears - click it to recall your meaning, one click marks it Learned. No flashcards and no due counts; vocabulary exports to TSV if you want Anki.

- KOReader users: there is our companion plugin, offlinetranslate-koplugin, which uses the same TSV format - vocabulary collected on an e-ink reader imports into the browser, and back.

If you read in one language only, a single switch (Use without translation) turns the translation half off and leaves a plain offline reader - and a monolingual StarDict dictionary still gives definitions on selection.

Privacy is the point, not a feature: no account, no server, no telemetry. The extension talks to exactly two hosts, both written into the package - Mozilla's translation-model bucket and the WikDict catalogue - and only when you click a download button on the settings page. You do not have to take our word for it: the source ships unminified, and you can simply turn the network off and keep reading.

Works in Firefox 142+ (desktop and Android - including e-ink Android tablets; on phones it starts in a reader-only mode so it does not fight the system text menu) and Chrome/Chromium 128+ (Brave and Edge too).

Overview and store links: https://reapps.eu/read
Source: https://github.com/fundacja-reborn/reread-webext
Firefox Add-ons: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/reread/

Happy to answer your questions

[reapps_eu]

re/read 0.5.22 is out on Firefox Add-Ons and the Chrome Web Store.

New: your saved phrases and your highlights with notes now keep a second copy in the extension's own storage - if the browser ever clears its databases, they come back by themselves. Saved articles and books too, with a switch in the settings. Still 100% on your device: no account, no cloud, no telemetry.

A Safari version (iPhone/iPad) is on its way.

Settings also show how much space re/read takes and whether the browser has promised to keep it.

Firefox (desktop & android) : https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/reread/
Chrome/Brave: https://chromewebstore.google.com/de...imcmmeeoplfcla
Source (AGPL 3.0): https://github.com/fundacja-reborn/reread-webext

[reapps_eu]

re/read (0.5.27): pictures in the offline reading list

By default a saved article keeps only its text. Open it and press "Download pictures" in the menu: the pictures are fetched once from the article's own site, kept on your device and shown in the article, also offline.

"Export with pictures" turns the backup of your reading list into a .zip with the pictures inside. Importing a backup adds only the articles you don't have yet, so the same file imported twice makes no duplicates.

You can export all articles or only selected ones

[Gormagon]

Why can't I download the extension for chromium based browsers on github? I get an error "Download error: Download interrupted" on the Google Store. Plus I*d rather want to try the extension on a browser that is blocked from accessing the web except for certain IPs. So I rather download the extension and install it myself.

[reapps_eu]

Hi! There was nothing to download on GitHub until today - the repository had only source code, no releases. That is fixed: https://github.com/fundacja-reborn/r...eleases/latest carries re-read-0.5.30-chromium.zip, the exact package that is in the Chrome Web Store as 0.5.30 (SHA-256 in the release notes), and every future version will have one too.

To install it: unzip the file, open chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode (top right), press Load unpacked and pick the unzipped folder. The extension stays installed across restarts; Chrome only shows its usual notice about developer-mode extensions on startup. Chrome/Chromium 128 or newer; Brave and Edge work the same way. (Installing a .crx directly is not a way around the store in plain Chrome - it refuses packages from outside it unless an enterprise policy allows them - hence Load unpacked.)

Your "Download interrupted" fits the restricted network, by the way: the store page is chromewebstore.google.com, but Chrome fetches the package itself from a different Google host (clients2.google.com / clients2.googleusercontent.com), so an allowlist that shows you the store page can still cut the actual download.

One more thing for a machine that only reaches certain addresses: translation models are downloaded from storage.googleapis.com, only when you press Download in the settings. If that host is blocked too, fetch the model files on another machine and use "Add a model from files" on the settings page - gzipped files can be used as they come. Dictionaries have the same "Add a dictionary from files" option.

[reapps_eu]

Oops, re-read-0.5.30-chromium.zip is now available for download: https://github.com/fundacja-reborn/r...eleases/latest